The Polish doctor never gave out such information. He hesitated for a moment. In this situation, he could not withhold the information without putting his own position at risk. Not including those that went to the House infrequently, he replied, the following were regular clients: the police captains of Lapa, Botafogo, Gávea, Tijuca, Santa Teresa, Mem de Sá, Madureira, Meier, and Bandeira Square; one lieutenant from Vila Isabel, who had ties to the jogo do bicho lottery, and a fingerprint expert.
Some coincidences really help the novelist—the chief of police happened to know this expert. What’s more, he held his ambitious nature and keen intelligence in high regard, so much so that he had made him head of the criminal identification services.
Thus, while the search for Fortunata was in full swing, the chief hurriedly called this important individual, who will yet shine on these pages. And it was to this individual that the chief of police assigned the investigation of the case, to be carried out with the highest level of confidentiality.
While the expert exercised his duties at the scene of the crime, the chief of police had no trouble convincing Dr. Zmuda to provide a false statement for the death certificate as to the causa mortis. After all, it would not be the first time that the Polish doctor had committed a criminal offense. And because he trusted—with the guarantee of the doctor himself and his head administrator—that the nurses would not dare reveal anything to the contrary, he was able to construct a final version of events: the secretary, after leaving a classified meeting with high-ranking government officials, suddenly fell ill as he passed through São Cristovão in a cab, and he asked the driver to take him to Dr. Zmuda’s residence—the closest medical clinic that it would occur to anyone to go to at that location. The Polish doctor attempted emergency procedures, but the patient finally succumbed.
This was the story they told the widow, the children, other relatives, and the press. When, at around 4 a.m., the body arrived for the viewing at the Catete Palace, it was already prepared and dressed in a beautiful high-collared robe. No one could detect any evidence of the crime.
The residence of the marquise—the lover of Pedro I—is not the only building in this city rumored to have secret passageways. In fact, the most notorious cases involve two of the oldest religious orders in Rio de Janeiro: that of São Bento, located on the hill of the same name, and that of the Jesuits, who erected a college on Castelo Hill.
The Benedictines were accused many times of promoting smuggling through a secret tunnel, which even had a wharf inside. Late at night, every so often, a rock would be moved to allow small skiffs or even boats filled with merchandise to pass through and furnish supplies to ships anchored near Paquetá.
The Jesuits, on the other hand—as has been long known—had opened similar passageways: one that began at the high altar of the college’s old church and then branched out into various tunnels (one of those mouths was discovered in 1905, during construction on Central Avenue) and another that connected the priests’ library to Calabouço Point. It was through this latter one (so they say) that they managed to carry off their fabulous treasure, shortly before they were expelled from the city after putting up a resistance, in 1760.
There were others too. For example, in 1831 a narrow hideout was discovered beneath the planks of one of the customs piers, which would have served as a hideaway for capoeiras and rebel fighters to then escape to the Atlantic.
The flight of these captives and convicts onto waiting galleys was promoted by an extensive network of so-called “enticers of slaves”—in actuality a criminal organization made up mainly of free Africans, in cahoots with a brotherhood of blacks and members of the military who served in the terrible prison of the navy’s armory, where detainees were submitted to forced labor in the quarries of Cobras Island.
What is incredible about this story is that, once in the basement of the customs building, the fugitives would proceed through an underwater tunnel—the first in the world of its kind—to the arsenal, where they would then be smuggled onto the galleys.
It is also said that a high-profile Carioca murder is tied to the secret passageways, one involving Jean du Clerc, a captain in the French Navy. The renowned pirate was defeated and imprisoned during his failed invasion of Rio de Janeiro in 1710. Detained in the lap of luxury at the home of a local nobleman, du Clerc was killed by a band of masked men who curiously gained entrance into the house without being noticed by the sentinels.
A few months after the crime, in 1711, another important pirate, Captain René du Guay, taking advantage of a dense fog, was able to attack at Gamboa Beach with more than five thousand men. This time around, the invasion of the city succeeded, thus avenging du Clerc’s defeat. Although he managed to extort a fabulous ransom, René du Guay did not find what he had been looking for—Lourenço Cão’s lost map, which had been in du Clerc’s possession when he set sail from La Rochelle.
This map not only untangled mysteries concerning a hypothetical discovery of Guanabara Bay by Phoenicians, it also showed the way to the precious Irajá mines and the location of a city of women, as well as many other important sites, including the mouth of the underground lagoon that contained the brackish water of immortality, which one could reach through a vast stone tunnel (most likely a natural concavity in the rock), the entrances to which were so hidden that they were unknown to the Indians themselves.
A secret tunnel also figures in the history of Rio de Janeiro’s most illustrious crime: the murder of the ruffian Pedro the Spaniard in the dungeons of Aljube, where he was found dead on the morning of the day he was meant to be hanged.
Pedro was a Galician, not a Spaniard. The nickname was given to him by the common folk of Rio in order to get under his skin. His sad story began at a very young age in his native Galicia, where he killed friends and relatives. He fled to Portugal, and there he violently killed a rich and beautiful lover who had showered him with gifts. Then he fled to Rio de Janeiro.
Pedro the Spaniard was never a capoeira: he killed through treachery, almost always from behind. He would kill benefactors, eliminate fellow gang members, and commit unnecessary acts of cruelty against helpless victims. It was not a matter of greed, or lust, and much less so ideology. I will leave it at that. Those who have the intestinal fortitude and wish to know the details can read José do Patrocínio’s novel.
He enters Rio’s criminal annals not as a murderer but as a victim. On the morning of the day he was to be hanged, Pedro the Spaniard was found dead in his cell. There was talk of witchcraft and poisoning; there was also talk of secret passageways. However, there was no official inquiry into his death, and in fact they may not even have realized that he was already dead.
For, against all of the laws of nature—or perhaps deliberately—they led the prisoner in that state to the gallows at Prainha. A large crowd witnessed the execution of the abominable bandit, who shook and swung just the same, hanging from the rope as he died a second time.
Days before leaving office, in November of 1910, President Nilo Peçanha inaugurated the Central Police Palace on Relação Street (corner of Inválidos). It was designed by Heitor de Melo, perhaps the principal exponent of the French style, which had been so in vogue for major city buildings ever since João VI.
The historical importance of the building transcends art, for it was at that same palace that the new forensic departments were located, whose mission it was to give technical support to the precincts, employing the most advanced forensic and criminological methods then available. It was also where the College of Police Sciences and the fascinating Crime Museum were established.
The museum’s collection is truly amazing. The objects on exhibit, all of them, were taken from real crime scenes or seized as evidence to be used against suspects. There were weapons and projectiles for ballistic analysis, instruments used in celebrated murders, objects with fingerprints (still a novelty at the time), shoeprint molds, pieces of fabrics
(for comparative analysis), even letters used to illustrate the latest techniques in graphology.
The museum also had a gruesome collection of human organs, removed during the autopsies of crime victims and then preserved in formic acid for forensic studies.
Also notable were the significant number of exhibits related to illicit activities, such as samba, Candomblé, and gambling: roulette wheels with cheat pedals, loaded dice, tarot cards with arcane characters, and the vast arsenal of religious objects of the mães- and pais-de-santos—among which I would highlight the most varied types of drums, including the oldest puíta manufactured in Rio de Janeiro, which is different from its African counterpart because the stem is on the inside.
Lastly, there was a section for documents: transcripts, reports, crime statistics, photos of murder victims, and anthropometric identification cards (the type championed by Alphonse Bertillon), which would soon became obsolete as forensic science began favoring more modern techniques, which prevailed in Argentina, the United States, and England.
The entire collection was under the care of Sebastião Baeta, who, in spite of being born out of wedlock into humble beginnings, had traveled to London, New York, and Buenos Aires, where he had studied techniques employed by forensic experts in those countries, specifically the use of fingerprints.
He was recognized as one of the most talented forensic investigators, and was a pioneer in the photographing and dusting of fingerprints.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the police high command chose their best forensic expert, and the chief of that division, to secretly collect and analyze the evidence in the murder committed at the House of Swaps. The reader must have already perceived that it was Baeta whom the chief of police rushed to call on the night of the crime.
Baeta had a great calling for the forensic sciences. Although he was not a doctor, he had acquired a solid understanding of anatomy and physiology and was rarely wrong when identifying the causa mortis and other circumstances surrounding a homicide.
Therefore, the coroner (hand-picked by the minister of justice himself), after a cursory examination, signed off on the expert’s conclusions, forwarded in advance to the chief of police, which stated that the secretary had died of asphyxiation caused by constriction of the respiratory cavities of the neck, and that, because of the decline in temperature and the first signs of mandibular and cervical stiffness, strangulation must have occurred shortly before the approximate time when Fortunata exited the building.
Fingerprint analysis, particularly of the wine bottle and glasses, revealed that two people were drinking in that room—the secretary and one other individual. According to the nurses, who had witnessed the comings and goings of the suspect before the murder, Fortunata had grabbed the bottle and glasses and took them with her into the bedroom. Therefore, it stood to reason that the second set of fingerprints was hers.
At a given moment, probably in the bedroom, the bottle was grabbed by the body and not the neck. The size of the hand that did so coincides with that of the person who strangled the victim. Therefore, it was the prostitute who killed the secretary, there being no reason to assume the presence of a third individual at the scene of the crime.
This conclusion, however, was not without controversy: Baeta could not help but wonder about Fortunata’s hand strength, which would have to be exceptional for a woman, and capable of fracturing the laryngeal cartilage of the secretary, a man with a robust and relatively adipose neck. Not to mention that she would have had to snap the cervical curvature at the fifth vertebra. Perhaps feeling a tinge of professional jealousy, the coroner chose to overlook this objection.
Of the objects seized from Rufino, the ones that most interested authorities were the earrings in the shape of seahorses; however, the overlapping fingerprints on them made precise identification difficult.
Sebastião Baeta also paid a visit to the English Cemetery. The first thing that caught his attention was the remnants of a bonfire, put out at least twelve hours earlier, which included not only ash, but also charred leather, probably from a shoe.
There were no signs of disturbed graves, or of overturned soil, except in a remote area, on the extreme right, on a slope, where, days before Rufino’s arrest, a mass grave had been dug. In that grave, the bodies of ten sailors, who perished during a quarantine of a British cargo ship, were buried. The ship had come from Ceylon and perhaps brought with it a plague of some sorts.
The episode with the cargo ship had caused a rift of sorts between the Anglican community and Brazilian authorities. The English intended to accept only those sailors who were subjects of the British crown and who adhered to the Anglican faith. The city, however, decided that they would either bury all eleven dead—which included Indians, Africans, and Malays—or they would all be sent to a common grave at another burial ground.
Forced to admit Muslims and idolaters onto such holy ground, the cemetery’s administrators were outraged and tried to block the exhumation, which they considered disgraceful, delaying the work of forensics by about ten days. Finally, on June 23rd, the mass grave was opened before a lieutenant from the First District and one of the expert’s assistants. No female cadaver was found, and thus they rejected the hypothesis that Rufino had killed Fortunata, stolen her earrings, and buried the body.
Baeta added the wine bottle and a photograph of the secretary’s neck (which did not show his face), highlighting the region where the prostitute had choked him, so that the comparative analysis employed could be taught to students at the Police Academy.
I had almost forgotten a key fact: the silver-handled whip, which aroused so many malicious comments, had on it fingerprints that forensics concluded belonged to the woman. However, since it had not been used as a weapon, it was not added to the museum’s collection.
Perhaps Sebastião Baeta’s greatest merit as a forensics expert was his previous experience as an investigator. He had joined the police force as an officer, stationed first in the fifth district, in the most dismal area of Lapa, a favorite location for the practice of capoeira and a breeding ground for bandits. He soon showed talent in solving complex cases, using a simple methodology, which could be summed up in a phrase that he himself had coined: “No one can withstand a continuous and exhaustive investigation.”
For Baeta, a crime scene said a lot about the criminal, who invariably left his “signature” behind. For him, ideally, the work of the forensic police consisted in discovering and identifying these signatures, without having to resort to the fallibility or even the venality of witnesses, the traditional tool for gathering evidence.
The expert’s enthusiasm for dactyloscopy, therefore, was to be expected. His most ambitious project was to create fingerprint records for the entire population of Rio de Janeiro so as to be able to immediately identify a perpetrator after a crime had been committed.
Nonetheless, in 1913 criminal identification techniques were still very new. Without properly hiring and training personnel, police authorities had no way of obtaining data for all of the city’s inhabitants, but rather only for those who passed through the precincts. And even then, not all suspects were taken to Relação Street to be processed.
It was thus that Baeta first came face to face with Rufino. On the afternoon of June 23rd, when the inspection of the English Cemetery had been concluded, the chief of police called the precinct at Maúa Square, and ordered that the sorcerer be freed after being taken down to Relação Street and undergoing the customary processing. The captain at the precinct balked at the order, but the decision had already been made.
“That man’s bait. Behind bars he won’t be of any use to us.”
Both the chief of police and Baeta were convinced that Rufino had not killed Fortunata, for one very simple reason: The old man’s run-ins with the police in the past had all been for 399s—loitering. Everyone knew him, what he did for a living, where he lived. Which was
precisely their great hope: that there might be some tie between him and the prostitute, so that they could track her down. If she were dead, on the other hand, discovering the motive of the crime, or who had ordered it, would be almost impossible.
The only problem—or, at least the only problem Baeta could see—was how to keep hidden the tie between the death of the secretary and the search for Fortunata. Especially since the earrings had been found in the possession of the sorcerer.
That was why the expert was extremely dismayed at seeing Rufino arrive at the police headquarters accompanied by an officer and the captain of the First District himself.
“I need to have a word with you, sir.”
It was a delicate situation. Baeta, who would have preferred to be questioning the old man, left the job up to his subordinates, and he invited the captain into a private room. The expert looked askance as the officer followed them in.
“Don’t worry. In the First District we’re all brothers.”
The captain thought it very important that he know the crime this woman known as Fortunata was being sought for. The expert, naturally, said he was also in the dark, that he worked in a bureaucratic area of the police, and who was he to question his superiors. The captain looked at him suspiciously.
“What’s the lady have to do with the old man?”
The situation was not only delicate, it was also dangerous. If Baeta did not act quickly, the Maúa Square people might get their hands on Fortunata. And of course they would force her to talk, and then the whole story would go public. The expert, thus, turned the tables and abandoned his defensive stance.
“You’ve had the old man for ten days. More than enough time for a confession.”
This time, to the surprise of the expert, the officer interceded, producing Rufino’s statement, where he alleged he had not received the earrings directly from Fortunata, but from a certain man.
The Mystery of Rio Page 2
